Stench of a scam as 100 compactors 'disappear'

By Manoj Sharma

You can smell them from a mile away. Even if by some means the stench is masked the stench, it’s reasonably a job to hide those six-wheeled behemoths. And yet the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike can’t seem to seek out – watch for it – around 100 rubbish compactors.

BBMP Joint Commissioner, solid waste management, has now ordered that fee for those rubbish vans be stopped immediately; it can be resumed only after the vans are discovered. BBMP currently has 594 rubbish vans; 74 belong to the civic frame and the rest are operated by way of contractors.

The Palike will pay anywhere between Rs 1.five lakh and Rs 1.7 lakh each month for each truck run by way of the contractor. The compactor contract device was once introduced long ago in 2013. At an overly conservative estimate of Rs 1.five lakh/month for 100 vans over the past 60 months, any individual seems to have revamped Rs 90 crore at BBMP’s expense.

The scam came to light after the high court directed the BBMP to form the ward micro plan for solid waste management in Bengaluru. All the 198 ward committees constituted on October 31, 2017, were requested to arrange a ward level plan to “make sure right kind solid waste management and sanitation work in the ward and finalise location of recent public sanitation gadgets”. As in line with the micro plan, a ward was once break up into blocks (750 households + small commercial gadgets) to which manpower and vehicles were allotted. An auto tipper is meant to assemble rainy waste from those 750 households and commercial gadgets. These auto tippers (with carrying capability of 500 kg) were further allotted compactors (at 10 tonnes capability, each compactor looks after 20 auto tippers).

For further streamlining of waste assortment and for accountability, BBMP issued RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) tags to the entire compactor drivers; they are meant to flash the playing cards on the landfills or solid waste management plants to trace where rubbish is being dumped. It was once then that the BBMP discovered that 100 such drivers by no means became up to sell off rubbish. “They seem to have disappeared. The search is constant,” stated Sarfaraz Khan, BBMP joint commissioner, solid waste management.

“We have no idea where those 100 compactors have long gone. We additionally have no idea whether or not they ever went on rubbish assortment and dumping rounds on a daily basis. I've requested the officials from the department to search for those 100 compactors and collect a list with their registration numbers. I've put on dangle the bills to contractors till the compactors are physically discovered,” he endured.

Garbage compactors first came to Bengaluru in 2008 but they were made obligatory for in 2013. A large number of compactors are run by way of contractors with deep hyperlinks to politicians and BBMP officials.

Balasubramaniam, a rubbish contractor, says he had prompt to Khan a number of times to keep an account of the compactors. “I had additionally prompt to test the vehicles physically and make bills provided that the compactor is working but no one stricken. Although Sarfaraz Khan is an effective officer, he couldn’t regulate it as he trusts the Palike engineers too much.”

Khan says all auto tippers and compactors shall be fitted with GPS devices to forestall a repeat. “We will be capable to observe each and every vehicle in the city. We have already introduced biometric attendance for pourakarmikas. With this, the collection of sanitation workers on BBMP’s rolls has diminished from around 34,000 previous to around 17,000 now. That translates right into a saving of about Rs 250 crore annually,” he stated.

Balasubramaniam claimed the engineers divert compactors to assemble waste from bulk turbines like hotels, mega apartment blocks and commercial establishments. “If the Joint Commissioner of SWM had no longer given such powers to these engineers this would by no means have came about. A physical test of these kind of compactors by way of BBMP along with RTO officials will have to be accomplished immediately. That may easily save the BBMP over Rs 400 crore annually,” he stated.

Leo Saldanha, a citizen activist and founder, Environment Support Group, stated: “This is the way in which BBMP has been operating for years. There is not any scrutiny of the works which are being undertaken. Corruption has been systematized in the BBMP which is why the Comptroller and Auditor General has come down closely on Palike and its device. If the segregation has taken position on ward level then there is no want for huge collection of compactors in the city. The rubbish disaster in the city has deliberately been created. A thorough enquiry is required on this issue.”